Before she could take action, however, the Sabbath must be observed. The Reverend Baring presented his parishioners with a fine sermon. The cook presented the family with a perfectly prepared roast joint. Jennifer spent the afternoon doing needlework and reading her Bible while her mother rested and her father ensconced himself in his library. That evening all the servants presented themselves, freshly scrubbed and pressed, in the morning room where Mr. Neville read a lesson from the Old Testament, one from the Gospels, and one from the Epistles, and led in a lengthy prayer. Mr. Neville then returned to his library, and the servants were free for the evening, as supper would be cold cuts and salad.
On Monday morning immediately after family prayers, Jennifer was off to a meeting of the British and Foreign Bible Society. She returned just in time to accompany her mother on a round of parish visits. So it was late in the afternoon before she could call at Manchester Square and request Branman to announce her to Lieutenant Greyston.
She was shown into the library. Dick sat at the same table where she had first encountered him. This time the table was piled considerably higher with papers, and Kirkham sat at another table beside a well-shaded lamp that did little to lighten the dim room.
Jennifer began pulling off her gloves as she sailed into the room. “Ah, Richard, I am most happy to see you so well employed. That is what I have come to speak to you about.”
Richard stood and turned in her direction. He grinned. “Hello, Dick, how nice to see you. I was just passing and thought I would call.” He sketched a bow and changed his voice. “Jenny, what a delightful surprise. Won’t you sit down? Shall I send for some tea?” Now he changed to a brisk, businesslike tone. “There. That should dispense with the social amenities. Now please do continue on the matter of my employment.”
Jennifer sat down in a hard-backed chair, and Kirkham turned out his lamp and left the room. “It is most unkind of you to mock me, sir. I have come to do you good.”
“That is a relief. But then I did not suppose you had come to do me harm.”
His irony was lost on her, however, as she plunged ahead. “I was most disappointed, Richard. You did not attend the earl’s speech.” She looked at him still standing by his desk as if at attention. “I am sitting, Richard. You may sit.”
“Ah, yes. As I do not require my eye patches in a dark room, I had perceived your position. I had thought, however, that if I am to face execution, I should prefer to meet it on my feet.”
A gurgle of laughter escaped Jennifer’s lips.
Richard smiled and sat. “There now, that’s better. I assume it’s the matter of pottery reform that you have come about.”
Immediately Jennifer’s intensity returned. “Richard, you can have no idea of the conditions. If you had heard the speech—”
“On the contrary, I have a very vivid idea. I have, in fact, heard the speech three times. Once from Aunt Charlotte, once from Livvy, and once from your friend Mr. Merriott, who called this morning to beg that I acquaint myself with the facts contained in these white papers he left with me.” He gestured toward the table where Kirkham had been sitting. “If you wish to recount the speech for me a fourth time, however, I shall be glad to listen. You have a far more charming voice than any of your predecessors.”
“Richard, this is excellent news! I had thought I would have to push and pull and shove to stir you to action. This is just what you need, and much good will come of your effort. I am delighted that others have done the work of informing you, and especially that dear Arthur thought to bring you the reports of the study commissions. Now you will soon be reaping the benefits of doing good for others.” She paused for breath.
But he broke in before she could continue. Now, however, the drollness was replaced by hard-bitten sharpness. “How very fortunate that you won’t be obliged to waste further time on this duty. You may mark ‘stir Richard Greyston to action’ off your list of good deeds to do today.” He came to his feet. “Miss Neville, I am not one of your charities. You needn’t try to reform, uplift, or do good to me. Allow me to wish you a good day.”
Jennifer was so stunned that she almost crashed into Kirkham, who had that moment entered the room. Anger crossed her features. Fine. She would do as he said and mark “stir Richard to action” off her list. Perhaps she would even mark Richard Greyston himself off her list. She swept to the door.
Dick heard Kirkham’s measured tread follow the swish of Jennifer’s silk skirt out the door. The soft click of the door told him he was alone. He had responded to Jennifer with sardonic humor and abruptness, just as he had earlier responded to his other visitors urging him to take up the banner of reform. Such attitudes served as a useful defense, but they did not deal with the issue.
He had allowed Kirkham to read the parliamentary reports because it was easier to do so than to make excuses for not doing so. His life’s goals had been denied him. He had to fill the time with something.
But the truth of the matter—the truth he might have admitted to Jennifer had she approached him in a less highhanded manner—was that the past two days of listening to Kirkham’s droning reading had made their impact. The earl’s speech, thoroughly recounted, plus graphic case studies and statistical evidence amassed in the Shaftesbury reports had threatened to breach his wall.
Now he must decide whether to allow the assault to continue. It was clear that he must find a new direction for his life. So what about this direction that was being thrust upon him? Had Providence put the awareness of this need in his way? Or would taking up such work simply be following the line of least resistance? And how much a part of the consideration was the fact that Miss Jennifer Neville was urging him in this direction? No answers presented themselves.
He hesitated at the next question. How much of his reluctance was due to fear? How much good could a blind man do? What if he should try and fail? He did not need another failure on his tally.
Kirkham returned to resume reading, but Richard waved him away. “Read it yourself and give me a summary. I do not wish to be disturbed.”
But Richard had made little progress toward answering any of his questions when Lady Eccleson entered the library some time later. “The tea is getting cold, Richard. I am not in the habit of being kept waiting in my own drawing room.”
“Thank you, Aunt Charlotte, but I am not in the least hungry for tea. Kirkham is just set to cover the last of these parliamentary reports with me.”
Richard heard the rustle of silk as she turned to his man. “Even one as ready to perform his duty as you are, Kirkham, must be glad enough of a tea break occasionally. I am certain my nephew will excuse you.”
“Thank you, My Lady. If the lieutenant would permit…”
Dick sensed conspiratorial grins between lady and servant.
“Dashed unfair of both of you to take advantage of a blind man like that. Should be ashamed.” Dick pulled the shades over his eyes and strode to the door, knocking over a misplaced chair on the way.
He did not slacken his pace until well inside the parlor where he all but cannoned into Lady Eccleson’s visitor. Tall though he was, Dick instinctively raised his head to greet the newcomer whose long, slim fingers gripped his hand so firmly. Lady Eccleson presented her nephew to the Earl of Shaftesbury.
“Your aunt tells me you are studying my white papers with considerable assiduity. I am heartily gratified. That is a formidable undertaking—one I fervently wish more would attempt.”
“Not nearly as formidable as the work of preparing the papers must be, sir. Your research is astounding. I cannot understand how any thinking, caring person could fail to be moved to action.” It was a moment before Dick realized the implication of his own words.
The earl guided Dick to the sofa with a hand on his elbow and sat beside him. “There are many who think I overstate, that I would move too fast to reform. There are few in positions of power who would choose to have their lifestyles changed.”
“Yes, but on this matter of child
labor in the potteries, the report raised several issues…”
Dick was well through his second scone and third cup of tea before he realized he hadn’t given a single thought to fears of spilling or clattering. He had so vividly pictured in his mind the conditions the earl described—both the appalling ones now existing and his hopes for a better future—that Dick had for a time forgotten he couldn’t actually see.
Eleven
October arrived unseasonably hot, and the heat held for two weeks and longer. The grass turned brown; Michaelmas daisies and autumn crocus were too parched to bloom. And Jennifer, with a determined lift of her chin, continued to push Lieutenant Richard Greyston out of her mind. Her efforts yielded mixed success.
When thoughts of Dick intruded, she would wonder if he was continuing with his study and if he had come to a decision about his life. And she attempted to pray for him. But she made no move to contact him. His dismissal still stung.
In her honest moments, Jenny had to admit that it was not just Dick’s words that stung, but her own. The memory of her high-handedness left her chagrined. Such behavior was exactly what those opposed to women taking up professions warned against. Perhaps they were right. She must remember she was no longer in Scutari. Society drawing rooms were not army hospitals. No matter how often her mother reminded her, it seemed she still relapsed. Would she ever be able to fit her two worlds together?
She thought again of Richard, also unable to put his world together since returning from the Crimea. She reached for a piece of floral note paper. Then withdrew her hand. No. She would send no messages. If Lieutenant Greyston had no use for her help, there were plenty of others who did.
She began calling on the families of her ragged school students as well as continuing her work within the All Souls parish.
She was determined to make a difference in the lives of these people.
But it was so overwhelming. The more she did, the more needs she saw, and the more she realized how impossible the job was. The crowded tenements on the edge of the slums where a dozen or more filthy lodgers crowded into one rat-infested room and children played in the gutters running with refuse were bad enough. Bad enough that even Jennifer realized she dare not go there alone, and so she always waited for another committee member or mission volunteer to go with her.
But even worse, she knew, were the rookeries in the darkest centers of these pockets of poverty. She had heard stories of small children starving to death on the streets and their bodies lying, decaying in the gutter because no one cared enough to seek a burial place. Jennifer had not seen such sights herself, but she could well believe that the stories were true. Her experience in the Crimea had taught her that no horror was impossible.
The third Thursday in October she went as usual to the ragged school. That night even her best students were restless and inattentive, and the slow ones were impossible. It was just as well that there were several absences, since she accomplished so little. She supposed they stayed away because of the discomfort of sitting in a close, stuffy room when even the dirty streets of a crowded tenement might have the hope of a tiny breeze blowing through them. But then one of her small charges clutched his stomach and ran from the room as fast as his bare feet would go.
“Hit’s the autumn pest, miss.” A grimy girl of about six or seven scratched her streaked blonde hair.
“You mean cholera?” Jenny held to the edge of her table for support. She remembered vividly the horrors of the vomiting and dysentery that swept through the army, leaving many dead within hours, weakening others to linger for weeks or longer in great pain before they finally died or eventually made a slow recovery. It seemed that there had been an outbreak of cholera in London every fall for almost as long as she could remember, and yet she had hoped that this year would be different.
Cleanliness, sobriety, and good ventilation were the best prevention of the plague, so it was little wonder that the pestilence flourished in Tothill, dirty, drunken and crammed as it was. Yet with all that had been accomplished by the Public Health Board and other committees, she had dared to hope. Surely conditions had improved enough to ward off the pestilence this year. But now the Health Board had been disbanded and replaced by a vague government department. And now more must suffer and die, victims of official bungling.
At last Mr. Walker dismissed the older students, so she could let her younger ones go. Jennifer had turned to pick up her bonnet when Edith Watson bustled in from the kitchen. “Jenny, I’ve no right to be asking it of you—ye look as peaky as some I’ve served in the mission—but the cholera has struck the shoeblacks’ home, and I’m going there now with a rhubarb purgative. I know you’re right fond of little Josh.”
Josh! Josh was in danger?
“Of course, I’ll go with you, Edith.” Then she paused. Her family had not consented to her coming home unescorted, but as Arthur was out of town again, Hinson would send Betsy in Mr. Neville’s carriage for her tonight. “Just a minute.” She turned to Rev. Walker. “When my maid arrives, please tell her where we have gone. She may collect me there.”
As it was growing dark out, the minister insisted on securing a cab to take the women across the river to Lambeth. Fog swirled around the vehicle on the way and encircled the gas-lit lamps in a glowing golden ball, each one disappearing behind them as another appeared in front. Jennifer was glad for the cabby and Mrs. Watson, for certainly she had no idea where she was as they left the lighted streets and entered an alleyway behind a warehouse. Mrs. Watson descended from the cab and paid the driver. Jennifer followed with a basket of medicine over her arm.
The shoeblacks’ home was clean and orderly, if sparsely furnished. The entire top floor was a dormitory filled with rows of iron beds. But here where all beds should still be empty, their inhabitants out polishing the shoes of fine gentlemen entering their clubs or theaters, a third of the beds were filled with curled-up balls of misery.
Even before she turned to the boys, Jennifer strode to the far end of the fetid room. It required considerable tugging and shoving, but at last the shutters came unstuck, and she was able to open the window. Swirls of damp fog rolled in, smelling vaguely of the river but far fresher than the air in the room that had been breathed and rebreathed by twenty boys.
Mrs. Watson began administering doses from brown bottles. She paused to hand one to Jennifer. “Three grains calomel, eight grains rhubarb in a little honey. They will need the doses repeated three times at intervals of four or five hours.” She looked under the nearest bed and then nodded with satisfaction. “This will assist nature in throwing off the contents of the bowels, so make sure they’s a bucket under every bed. Just like we had in the Crimea, eh?”
Jennifer took the bottle and spoon, thinking, Indeed. Only in a way this was worse than the Crimea because the sufferers were children and because the official bunglers were closer at hand.
Mrs. Watson continued her lecture, as they had now been joined by the administrator of the home in whose hands they would leave the nursing. “In the morning they can be given my special tea.” Edith Watson pointed to another basket. “That there’s quince seeds, which are of a very mucilaginous nature. Pour boiling water over them and give each boy as much as he’ll drink.” She paused in the midst of administering spoonsful of her rhubarb mixture between fever-cracked lips to shake her head. “Whey would be better—nothing coats the stomach like whey. But in this weather it’d go off too fast, so we must do the best we can with what we have.”
Jennifer’s skirt brushed the scrubbed floor boards, and for a moment the sound recalled the hours she had spent battling this same disease in Scutari. Here also she had a special patient for whom to fight. Josh’s barley-white hair shone against the gray covers of the next bed. Jenny forced a spoonful of the mixture between his teeth, but he was almost too weak to swallow. She thought of the horrors this small creature had endured as a chimney sweep. Had he been rescued from that and given the hope of education and employment only to die of
cholera? She hadn’t felt such outrage against the unfairness of the universe since her darkest days in the Barracks Hospital.
“Don’t you have any vinegar-water?” A voice penetrated her consciousness as if from a distance. “I remember how good that felt when I was in a similar state. Or maybe it was just the touch of your hands.”
“Dick!” Jenny turned so quickly at the sound of his voice that she almost spilled Mrs. Watson’s carefully brewed elixir.
“What are you doing here? How did you—” She thrust her half-empty medicine bottle at an assistant from the home and took Dick’s hand. “I can’t believe it. I was just thinking about you.”
“I was thinking about you, too, Jennifer. I went to your home to apologize for our last parting. Hinson was preparing to send Betsy to collect you. I came instead. I trust you won’t object to the substitution? Betsy’s better qualifications for ‘seeing’ you home will count for little in this fog.”
Unbelievably her throat tightened. What was the matter with her? She squeezed his hand. “I don’t mind.”
Mrs. Watson bustled by, wiping her hands on her white apron. “There now—that’s the first dose. Next one in four hours,” she instructed the administrator.
Dick raised his head like a horse to a scent. “I know that voice.”
Jenny introduced them, and the motherly Mrs. Watson hugged Richard thoroughly with delight.
“Well.” Richard caught his breath. “Are you ladies ready to leave?”
They were. As the carriage clattered over the uneven streets, Jenny stole glances at the man beside her. His prominent nose was silhouetted against the pale light of the carriage window. She turned a bit farther until she could see the shadowed shape of his high cheekbones, square chin, and firm mouth. Perhaps this was the first time she had really regarded him thus—not as a patient, not as a friend’s brother, not as a compassionate cause, but as a man of strong feeling and strong determination. Strong enough to survive the horrors of the battle of Balaclava and the Scutari hospital and fight his way back from the despair of blindness and loss to… She stopped. To what? She had been so anxious to thrust him forward without being sure of her own direction. Had he seen the pitfalls more clearly than she?
Where Love Shines Page 11
